Gibson GA19 rvt Falcon

During the 50s and 60s Gibson went head-to-head with Fender and other amplifier manufacturers but never held the same popularity and market share of their competitors.

Fender had better marketing, were based on the vibrant west coast, their amps were louder and more powerful, their circuits more refined and had tricks like kick-back legs and standby switches.

Despite all that, with this Falcon GA-19RVT and a few other models released in 1961 Gibson were ahead of Fender in putting out an amp with reverb. They also used an unusual placement of the reverb circuit which allows for some creative uses.

When Fender did get around to releasing their reverb amps (such as the Princeton reverb), they placed the reverb circuit after the pre-amp section and then had the wet signal mixed with the dry.

Gibson went about it in another way. The Falcon's reverb circuit taps the signal before the volume and tone control, and mixes it with the dry signal via independent volume controls. This means you can turn the amp’s volume control all the way down, turn up the reverb knob and hear only the wet reverb sound and none of the dry signal at all.

Another interesting feature of the Falcon is the separate line level monitor output which allows you to take the signal from the pre-amp section and run it to another guitar amp. This feature in combination with the unusual reverb implementation means you can effectively use the amp as a standalone reverb tank or a giant reverb pedal, if you so wished.

I even like to use it while mixing with a reamp box to send elements of the mix to, for a great lofi spring reverb sound.

Another cool way to use the monitor out is to run it out to another similarly powered amp like our Vox AC15 twin, but with a delay pedal with a short slap delay in-between the two signals to create a unique stereo sound.

Gibson only sold 204 of the “tweed” variety of Falcons in 1961 and shortly afterward changed the design to the Crestline version which included some detrimental changes to the circuit, the sound and the aesthetics.

Our Falcon is a beautiful sounding amp, very inspiring to play through and my personal favourite of all the amps in our collection.